Matushevska N. Communicative Situation of Temptation in Contemporary English Cinematic Discourse: A Cognitive and Communicative Aspect

The thesis focuses on a communicative situation of temptation in contemporary English cinematic discourse from the standpoint of cognitive and communicative approach. The anthropocentric focus of contemporary linguistics and growing scholars’ interest in the pragmatic factor of communication predetermine the topicality of the research. Temptation is a cognitive and communicative entity, as well as a social process, a kind of regulatory speech act that reveals provocative communication in the form of demonstrating an attractor in order to impel the addresser to perform actions beneficial for the tempter but contradicting the victim’s system of beliefs. In the vein of communicative linguistics the paper defines the communicative situation of temptation as a model of interaction between communicants of a regulatory character intended to achieve the addresser’s aim by stimulating urgent needs of the addressee. The latter tries to withstand a desire to receive certain services, rewards or refrain from realization of concrete actions, which the addresser inclines them to. Components of the communicative situation of temptation are as follows: its participants (addresser and addressee); verbal and non-verbal actions of communicants; their social and communicative roles, status; needs, intentions and goals; instrument (attractor); circumstances (time, place). The concept of TEMPTATION forms a cognitive basis for the communicative situation of temptation. Conceptual structure of the communicative situation of temptation is represented as a frame-based model with the following slots: SOCIAL DIMENSIONS, PARTICIPANTS, ACTION, ATTRACTOR. Pragmatic meaning of temptation is generated by various verbal and nonverbal means. The intention of temptation is defined through reconstructing implicatures with due regard for contextual restriction in any given communicative episode. The communicative situation of temptation is characterized by cooperation, providing for the interaction of the participants, and actualized via tactics of proposing, promising, persuading, and that of referring to perspective. Keywords: communicative situation, cognitive and pragmatic analysis, frame-based model, communicative tactics, temptation.